


with every breath I swallow, I drown

by whitchry9



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [9]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Temporary Character Death, coughing up blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 13:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21411247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: Klaus has convinced himself the cough is because it's winter, he smokes too much, and lives on the street. Ben disagrees.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1379821
Comments: 8
Kudos: 199
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo, The Best of Klaus





	with every breath I swallow, I drown

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill for: coughing up blood
> 
> title from PD Vulpe. read it here: https://lostcap.tumblr.com/post/137434828623/i-looked-it-up-you-know-this-heaviness-in-my
> 
> see my bingo card and poke at me here: https://ijustreallylovedaredevil.tumblr.com/bt

He’s had the cough for weeks now, but it’s the middle of winter and he’s been sleeping on the streets more nights than he’s been not, so Klaus doesn’t expect it to clear up any time soon. He takes cough meds if he can get his hands on them, but those aren’t the kind of drugs he usually goes for.

“You should go to a clinic,” Ben urges him after he wakes up one morning having sweat through his clothes despite the chilling weather.

“Yeah, because I can afford that,” Klaus tells him, rolling his eyes and popping the last of yesterday’s pills in his mouth. He was going to have to get more, or get more money.

“There are free clinics. Or you could go home. Remember the newspaper we saw the other day? He’s out of town on a business trip. God knows what he’s doing, but he shouldn’t be there.”

Klaus shivers at the thought of going back to the mansion.

Actually, part of it might be his damp clothes. Whatever.

“I’ll be fine,” he tells Ben. He stands up and stretches, already plotting how to get money for his next fix.

“I think you’ve lost weight,” Ben tells him later. A week later? A month? Klaus hasn’t really been keeping track.

“I call it the poverty diet,” Klaus says, waving his fingers lazily in his brother’s direction. He’s in the apartment of his current fling, which was solely so he didn’t have to sleep on the streets when the temperature dipped below zero again.

Ben rolls his eyes. “More than that.”

Klaus considers it. His clothes still fit, but that might be because he’s been layering them to protect against the bitter cold. If his jacket was still the same size when he wore three shirts underneath it, maybe he had lost weight.

“What am I supposed to do? Eat more?”

Ben sighs, closing his book with more force than necessary, and disappearing into the ether.

“Rude,” Klaus tells him, but only he hears it.

It seems like spring is finally thinking about showing its lazy ass, and Klaus still has the cough. He was kinda hoping it would be gone by then, the bronchitis or whatever having cleared itself up. Of course, the smoking probably didn’t help.

Ben stares at him as he takes a break from his joint to cough up a portion of his lung.

“So how does a visit to the doctor sound now?” he asks, pointing to the elbow of Klaus’s coat, where he had been coughing into. The fabric of the jacket, already stained to varying degrees, was now tinged red.

“Alright, fine,” Klaus acquiesces. He wipes at the jacket halfheartedly as he follows Ben down the street. “This better not stain.”

Why Ben knows where the nearest free clinic is, Klaus can’t say. It’s not like his brother has access to the internet in the afterlife, and Klaus sure as hell hasn’t been looking it up. He shoves that question aside in an attempt to focus on the form he’s been given, which asks for a lot of his personal information and medical history.

He looks to Ben desperately, but doesn’t say anything because the last thing he needs is to be thrown in a psych hospital to be treated for hallucinations. (Again.)

Ben sighs, but moves to his side, standing in the chair next to Klaus, which happens to have a person sitting in it. Klaus notes with delight that the man sitting there shifts uncomfortably.

“Okay, just cross out the address. What’s the fake last name you’re using now? Put that in the box. Birthdate is the same. For medical history, you should probably mention that you’ve broken your jaw, and that one time you got pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. And for the history of present illness, write that you’ve had a cough for almost three months now, night sweats, weight loss, and now you’re coughing up blood.”

Klaus obediently writes down everything that Ben says, something catching in his chest when he realizes how long it’s been. Ben must hate this, having to watch him treat his body like shit and unable to do anything about it.

(It didn’t mean Klaus was going to stop though.)

He dozes in the chair for a bit until it’s his turn.

The doctor doesn’t even look at him and he’s already ordering him to cough in a cup. Then he’s told to strip his shirts off, and there’s a cold stethoscope pressed against his skin.

Klaus hisses.

Ben tries to swat him. “Play nice.”

The doctor is jotting down notes on a clipboard. He’s wearing a mask. Klaus wonders if he does that for all the patients or just the ones coughing up blood.

The doctor hands him a sheet of paper. “Go down the hall, turn right, and then left, and get an x-ray taken. Then come back.”

Klaus spends most of the time getting an x-ray wishing he had finished the joint in his pocket before walking into the clinic. He’s getting annoyingly sober. He spares a few minutes to wonder if Ben would show up on an x-ray, before deciding probably not.

Then he shuffles back to the waiting room again, falling asleep with Ben sitting next to him in a chair, the room somewhat more empty than it had been earlier.

The same doctor pulls him back into a room, still wearing a mask.

Klaus wonders what he looks like behind the mask. He wonders what this news would be like if it wasn’t separated from him by layers of fabric.

“You have tuberculosis. You’ll need to take a combination of four antibiotics for two months, then you’ll be on two antibiotics for four months, for a total of six months of antibiotics.”

“Exsqueeze me?”

“Klaus!” Ben hisses at him.

The doctor just stares at him. Klaus gets the feeling he’s seen a lot of shit.

He hands Klaus the prescription. “This is for a two week supply. You can get a refill after ten days. You need to take them consistently or you won’t get better.”

Klaus snatches it out of his hand. He can’t read the drug names but he’d bet his left nipple they didn’t have any resale value. Jesus, he might as well take them. They were no good to him otherwise.

“I can’t afford this.”

“Tuberculosis is a public health concern, and the medications will be supplied at no cost to you.”

When Klaus doesn’t say anything he continues. “After the two months, you’ll need another chest x-ray to be sure that it’s responding to the treatment and that you can switch to just the two medications. You need to come back here in a month so we can check how you’re doing.”

Klaus nods in all the right spots, tucks the prescription in his coat pocket, and eventually waltzes out of the clinic. He even fills the prescription, swallowing the pills like he does in rehab, opening his mouth to prove to Ben they were gone.

He takes the pills, gets them refilled, takes the pills, gets them refilled, misses a few doses, takes the pills, misses more doses.

Doesn’t get them refilled. Misses his appointment.

On the day he’s supposed to be getting a chest x-ray to check on his progress, Klaus is overdosing in an alley. Ben isn’t there, since they’d fought over him taking the medication earlier that day. The cough that had been getting better is back with a vengeance, but Klaus has enough ketamine in his body that he doesn’t care anymore.

If Ben was there, he would have seen Klaus cough and cough and cough and then, not do anything else.

He doesn’t make it to the afterlife that time, God just waves her hand and Klaus’s heart starts beating again.

He doesn’t cough. The prescription goes unfilled.

(Three years later, after the apocalypse doesn’t happen, he breaks two ribs on a mission, and there is nothing in the chest x-ray to indicate to Grace that he ever had TB. God didn’t do things half assed.)


End file.
